I would say that the majority of the people I have the most anger at are dead, and I doubt I\u2019m alone in that. The amount of dead people who have directly caused the conditions I am living under is very very high. I do not like their actions nor do they have any ability to change. Sometimes I can\u2019t even assume they were trying their best to do good but ultimately failed because they acted with malice and often challenged malice which only strengthened their resolve to do worse (looking at you Ronald Reagan). Often they were, in my opinion, bad people with no redeeming qualities (looking at you Ronald Reagan). Oftentimes my anger at these people is a driving force for my own activist tendencies (looking at you Ronald Reagan). Am I just fueled by spite? Is that what this is? Or is there a way in which it could be channeled into Lordean Rage as Myisha Cherry defines it.
\nLordean Rage is an anti-racist anger that operates under the idea that no one is free until everyone is free. \u201cThe targets of Lordean Rage are those who are complicit in and perpetrators of racism and racial injustice. This type of anger is directed at racist actions, racist attitudes, and presumptions (of people) that arise out of those attitudes\u201d (Cherry 23). There is already a large problem with my being mad at dead people. Sometimes when I am angry at them I put my anger onto them, their face, their voice, their existence, not necessarily their beliefs and attitudes even though that\u2019s where my anger started. Resisting that is incredibly hard, especially the later in the day it gets. Saying \u201cGod I hate Ronald Reagan\u201d is really easy and satisfying, whereas \u201cI hate the beliefs and actions of Ronald Reagan because of how they were racially, socially, and economically unjust and have caused a lot of the present day circumstances I have lived under\u201d scratches that hate itch much less. However it seems like it would be much more useful to have that anger redirected into a more useful manner such as Lordean Rage. Can Lordean Rage actually interact with dead people though? Lordean Rage is directed at the beliefs and actions of people and not actually the people themselves, in the sense that it goes for aspects of them in an attempt to change them. Lordean Rage treats those who it is aimed at as ends rather than means. Am I turning these dead people to means to my anger rather than ends? Can you even use them like that because they are dead?
\nThe targets of Lordean rage are those who are part of the problem, those who contribute in either active or passive ways to the discrimination of people based on identity. But the anger is directed at them because of their actions, attitudes and presumptions. When I get angry at, let’s say for instance Ronald Reagan, there is little point because he is long dead and his actions, attitudes, and presumptions have already happened and defined him; he is no longer able to change, to be free with us when we have all become free. Frankly, I also don\u2019t want him to be free with me, but that is another, less Lordean notion that I am giving into. That is for sure a denial of his value as an end, which is probably something that I should be keeping in mind. Did he forfeit his right to be treated as an end? Possibly when he did all the terrible things that he did, but that is hard to determine. As for Lordean Rage, we can direct our anger at his actions and attitudes, but we can\u2019t have him as a target of the anger because he is long dead.
\nIf this is true, should we believe that the dead person is alive when we decide to become angry at them? Is that a way of expressing Lordean Rage at people who cannot have anger directed directly at? I\u2019m not sure how that interacts with the idea that they are being used as means rather than as an end in themselves, but maybe it\u2019s alright because they can\u2019t be used because they no longer exist. However it could be considered a kind of image smear that they can\u2019t defend themselves from which would not be nice. It also would go against some kind of post-death agency that they could have, but whether or not that\u2019s considered valid I do not know. I personally would think that it wouldn\u2019t matter all that much because to be wronged an agent has to currently be alive, however there are cases that this wouldn\u2019t be the greatest thing to do so I am not sure. Personally I\u2019d hate it if someone was being rude about me after my death, but like, I would never know and it\u2019s not like it\u2019s relevant to me because I\u2019m dead. It\u2019s hard to think about yourself as dead so you want to project your thoughts about yourself onto other people (possibly Ronald Reagan in a moment of unprecedented empathy), but that doesn\u2019t make sense by any observable understanding of death and it\u2019s permanency (phew thought I\u2019d have to empathize with Ronald Reagan). Obviously this differs if you hold some kind of religious beliefs but I don\u2019t so as far as I\u2019m concerned you\u2019re dead forever and there is no afterlife. But the fact that you imagine them alive holds a kind of moral capacity to it. Obviously they are not, but if you believe them to be alive, and you act that way, then you are still being immoral in a more cosmic sense. Maybe it\u2019s just best to find present people to try and get angry at.
\nCan you be angry at dead people? Yes, obviously. Does holding a kind of Lordean Rage towards them conflict with that at all? Maybe? It\u2019s all about placing your anger in the right place, not on the person themselves but on their actions and attitudes. Can you change them? Hell no, so maybe if you\u2019re like me and you get angry at dead people often, then you\u2019d better find something else to get angry at even though they are so damn good at disappointing you. That\u2019s probably the best solution to all of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I would say that the majority of the people I have the most anger at are dead, and I doubt I\u2019m alone in that. The amount of dead…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rage","category-uncategorized"],"splot_meta":{"author":"Evan","license":"","source":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallegft.sites.wfu.edu\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}